FILE – In this Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020 photo, Cobb County Election officials prepare for a recount, in Marietta, Ga. A conservative group that claimed to uncover a ballot trafficking scheme in Georgia has told a judge it has no evidence to back up its allegations. Texas-based group True the Vote in complaint filed with Georgia’s secretary of state said it had spoken to several people with knowledge of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes during 2020 and 2021 elections. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
ShareSAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A conservative group has told a Georgia judge that it doesn’t have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the the 2020 general election and a runoff two months later.
Texas-based True the Vote filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2021, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a January 2021 runoff.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge in Atlanta signed an order last year requiring True the Vote to provide evidence it had collected, including the names of people who were sources of information, to state elections officials who were frustrated by the group’s refusal to share evidence with investigators.
In their written response, attorneys for True the Vote said the group had no names or other documentary evidence to share.
“Once again, True the Vote has proven itself untrustworthy and unable to provide a shred of evidence for a single one of their fairy-tale allegations,” Raffensperger spokesman Mike Hassinger said Wednesday. “Like all the lies about Georgia’s 2020 election, their fabricated claims of ballot harvesting have been repeatedly debunked.”
True the Vote’s assertions were relied upon heavily for “2000 Mules,” a widely debunked film by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. A State Election Board investigation found that surveillance camera footage that the film claimed showed ballot stuffing actually showed people submitting ballots for themselves and family members who lived with them, which is allowed under Georgia law.
The election board subpoenaed True the Vote to provide evidence that would assist it in investigating the group’s ballot trafficking allegations.
True the Vote’s complaint said its investigators “spoke with several individuals regarding personal knowledge, methods, and organizations involved in ballot trafficking in Georgia.” It said one person, referred to in the complaint only as John Doe, “admitted to personally participating and provided specific information about the ballot trafficking process.”
Frustrated by the group’s refusal to share evidence, Georgia officials took it to court last year. A judge ordered True the Vote to turn over names and contact information for anyone who had provided information, as well as any recordings, transcripts, witness statements or other documents supporting its allegations.
The group came up empty-handed despite having “made every additional reasonable effort to locate responsive items,” its attorneys David Oles and Michael Wynne wrote in a Dec. 11 legal filing first reported Wednesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
True the Vote’s founder and president, Catherine Engelbrecht, didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press email seeking comment Wednesday. She and another member of the group were briefly jailed in 2022 for contempt for not complying with a court order to provide information in a defamation lawsuit. The suit accused True the Vote of falsely claiming that an election software provider stored the personal information of U.S. election workers on an unsecured server in China.
Prior to the State Election Board’s investigation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation looked into True the Vote’s assertion that it was able to use surveillance video and geospatial mobile device information to support its allegations. In a September 2021 letter, Vic Reynolds, who was then the GBI’s director, said the evidence produced did not amount to proof of ballot harvesting.
State elections officials opened their own investigation after receiving True the Vote’s complaint two months later. When pressed to provide names of sources and other documentation, the group last year tried to withdraw its complaint. One of its attorneys wrote that a complete response would require True the Vote to identify people to whom it had promised confidentiality.
The State Election Board refused to shelve the complaint and went to court to force True the Vote to turn over information.
In addition to names, the judge ordered True the Vote to provide copies of any confidentiality agreements it had with sources.
The group’s attorneys replied: “TTV has no such documents in its possession, custody, or control.”
Category: Courts / Laws / legal
GA Senate Advances “Don’t Say Gay” Bill After Hearing From Homocons, Opponents Weren’t Allowed To Speak
Notice they let only the anti-trans bigots speak, to back up the unpopular and unneeded laws. They then abruptly ended the debate, preventing the dozens of attendees opposed to the bill from speaking. Please notice the large number of people apposed to the bill that the republicans not only did not allow to speak but ignored. In the minds of the republicans their hate is the only thing that matters. These are the last gasps of desperate fundamentalist bigot haters to attack tolerance and acceptance. I laugh at the idea that these republicans are claiming it is the trans people only they hate, but as we have seen in other states they started with trying to stop trans kids in schools, and moved to trying to stop all the LGBTQIA people everywhere in public. Also these bills are always directed at public schools, the religious ones tend to be more conservative and the more wealthy secular ones the wealthy people don’t want their schools messed with by bigots. Hugs. Scottie
The Georgia Recorder reports:
A controversial bill dubbed Georgia’s version of “Don’t Say Gay” moved forward in a Senate committee Tuesday after three years of work and multiple failures to move, largely over Republican opposition to the inclusion of private schools. The bill passed committee on a 6-3 party line vote during a committee meeting in which proponents were given 15 minutes to speak but opponents did not receive time to talk. Dozens of people attended the meeting.
Jeff Cleghorn, an attorney who called himself a gay rights advocate opposed to gender ideology, said LGBTQ+ acceptance has increased because of the hard work of gay, lesbian and bisexual activists, but he said transgender people have attempted to “piggyback” off that struggle. “SB 88 is necessary because the former gay rights movement has been hijacked by those pushing this dishonest gender ideology on children,” he said.
The Los Angeles Blade reports:
Immediately after the bill’s sponsor spoke about the bill, he ceded the floor to Jeff Cleghorn, a gay anti-trans activist who calls transgender people “mentally ill sex fetishists” and regularly shares content from groups like Gays Against Groomers and Libs of TikTok.
Following an incendiary speech in which he advocated for separating transgender individuals from the LGBTQ+ community, Republicans allowed four people to speak.
These included a former president of the Young Republicans, a representative from Gays Against Groomers, and a representative from the Georgia Log Cabin Republican. They then abruptly ended the debate, preventing the dozens of attendees opposed to the bill from speaking.
Jeff Cleghorn, an attorney who called himself a gay rights advocate opposed to gender ideology,
Don’t make me post it again.
*sigh*
I’m going to have to post it again, aren’t I.
Any member of our community that doesn’t support trans rights doesn’t deserve to be part of the community at all.
Any member of the human community that doesn’t support everyone’s rights doesn’t deserve to be part of the community at all.
Piggy back my ass. Trans persons have been standing alongside of us since day one. That queen needs a little snap out of it action. I could handle that.
The fact is that drag queens and trans have been with us gay men since the beginning. They were there in the stonewall bar when the cops raided it.
Here is the PROOF! Marsha P. Johnson at the First Christopher Street Liberation Day March, 1970. Leonard Fink / LGBT Community Center Archive.
It is always shocking to discover trans-phobic gays among us. I stopped reading Americablog long ago when it’s owner, John Aravosis, was increasingly saying why should “we” help “them” as if we are not them.
No one is free until we are all free!
Fuck off. Do you think they’ll stop at Trans folks?
Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, Mormons, Catholics, they’ll keep narrowing the scope of acceptable people because Authoritarianism only thrives when there’s an Other to villainize.
My niece is now my nephew and is much happier that way. I’ll say no more.
Mine as well
Ashley to Oliver.
Oliver is so much happier than Ashley ever was.
living your authentic life is always best.
They are desperate to slam through as much hate bills as possible before they get their asses handed to them in November
” in which proponents were given 15 minutes to speak but opponents did not receive time to talk.”
WTF?
“SB 88 is necessary because the former gay rights movement has been hijacked by those pushing this dishonest gender ideology on children,” he said.”
What the ever loving fuck?
That “former gay rights movement” was lead by transexuals and drag queens…
Utah Speaker Appeared At Far-Right “Patriot” Event
The goal is to make the state Christian controlled enforcing church doctrine with laws, then move that same thing to the federal level. Force the entire country and everyone in it to be their brand of Christianity. “Patriot Academy,” a far-right group that offers “biblical citizenship” training programs that encourage the Christian nationalist belief that government should be run according to Christian values. They forget how this works in the Islamic countries that are theocracy. There can no divergence from rules written by warlords in the deep past. It stops all progress of the modern age. Science must conform to what was known then, same with medical advances. It retards, slows, regresses society while the rest of the world moves forward. In the US due to religion, stem cell research was made mostly illegal. The rest of the advanced world kept finding ways to solve medical issues with stem cell treatments. Those treatments wealthy US legislators that past the laws against that research use when they need that treatment. Hugs. Scottie
Utah Speaker Appeared At Far-Right “Patriot” Event
The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, who has made increasing trust in government a focus of his tenure as a legislative leader, is giving conflicting reasons for keeping his calendar of speaking engagements from the public after speaking at a Christian nationalist event last month.
In January, Schultz was a featured speaker at an event sponsored by “Patriot Academy,” a far-right group that offers “biblical citizenship” training programs that encourage the Christian nationalist belief that government should be run according to Christian values.
Rick Green, who headlined the event, is a close ally of pseudo-historian David Barton, who claims the authors of the U.S. Constitution did not intend for the separation of church and state and wanted to create an explicitly Christian country.
Read the full article.
Does this matter for a party which has fully embraced White Supremacy?
I really hate how these people have commandeered the word “patriot” and drained it of any real meaning.
And “Christian”. And “freedom”. And “liberty”.
I like JCF’s term “Christianist” for these people who claim to be Christian but don’t recognize the Sermon on the Mount. They refuse to read that squishy “red letter” stuff (those who don’t have any familiarity with the Bible, the words uttered by Jesus are often highlighted in red, at least in older Bibles).
And family and parental rights and states rights
Nowadays, *patriot* means TERRORIST .
A devout Mormon should be very wary of christian nationalists.
You’re right Nic, Mormons are only considered “christians” since Romney ran against President Obama. The mormons don’t acknowledge Jesus Christ as the savior, blah, blah, blah, just yet another “prophet” of god. Christianists can turn on them as quickly as they adopted mormons.
They like moving goalposts to get their way.
C
It doesn’t seem to hurt the devout Mormon Mike Lee.
I can’t think of a more christian nationalist than when he compared Trump to BoM hero Moroni. But I’m glad to add: most of my Mormon neighbors/friends laughed out loud when they heard about this comparison. And yet, Mr.Lee was reelected. (sigh)
Close enough,
I remember listening to evangelicals claiming Hitler was an atheist
Oops
Even were that somehow true, all Nazis were required to be christian.
This image had gotten me a 3-day Facebook ban, last time I posted it, no allowance for educational use.
Tennessee Approves Bill Allowing Anybody To Refuse Officiating At Same-Sex Weddings Because Of Jesus
Another attempt to exempt “Christians” or anyone who wants to discriminate against the gays from laws requiring equal treat of everyone. It says that if you don’t like the gays or the trans, you can just not do your job, regardless of the fact that is what your job is. Think about how horrible these laws are, think of what they are trying to accomplish. They send the message that Christians are the most privileged highest level of person in society, automatically. It also sends the messaged that the LGBTQIA, especially the gays and trans, are the lowest of the low in society. The goal, to drive the society / public back to the 1950s, erasing all the equality and advancements in tolerance / acceptance. The goal is removing the gays / trans from public view and this is done by denying them equal treatment under the law. If you think these laws sound OK try rewording them. It is OK not to serve or do your job is you believe it is wrong for black people to be married, or mixed races marriage. You can refuse to do your job and not take pictures of a wedding because it has a Jewish person and a Catholic. You can refuse to cater a weeding if the people getting married were once married before and now are divorced. If you think the examples are wrong then it is wrong to do this to gay or trans people. If you think the examples are correct then you are saying everyone gets to know and judge everyone else and screw the people you dislike or hate. This is simply hate made in to law driven by religion. Laws in a secular country are by definition not religious edicts, they are civil. If you want religion to rule you need to move to a theocracy. Notice a theocracy is not a democracy. Hugs. Scottie
The Tennessean reports:
Hours after a bill allowing marriage officiants to decline to solemnize weddings if they have moral objections received final passage from lawmakers, a vibrant crowd rallied on Capitol Hill advocating against a slate of bills aimed at placing new restrictions on Tennessee’s LGBTQ community.
Senate Bill 596, which would allow officiants to decline to perform weddings, passed the Tennessee Senate without debate along party lines on Monday evening. The bill passed the House last year, and will head to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.
Sen. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, who sponsored the bill, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this month that the goal of his bill is to provide clarity on whether officiants are required to perform marriages.
Truthout reports:
The bill wouldn’t just apply to wedding officiants and religious leaders — it also amends Tennessee Code Section 36-3-301, which applies to public government officials, including county clerks who handle marriage licenses. The legislation would allow those individuals, too, to refuse to “solemnize” a marriage based on their own religious convictions.
It’s unclear whether Republican Gov. Bill Lee will sign the bill into law. Lee has signed a slew of anti-LGBTQ bills since becoming governor, including one allowing state-funded foster care agencies to legally deny LGBTQ people the ability to serve as foster parents. Since 2015, more than a dozen anti-LGBTQ bills have become law in Tennessee.
Pody has appeared here many times for his attacks on same-sex marriage. In 2016, he sought to “nullify” the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling.
In 2017, he sponsored a bill calling for Tennessee to defy Obergefell entirely, and literally fled protesters at his press conference.
In 2019, he filed the “Tennessee Natural Marriage Bill” that would void same-sex marriages, something he says God told him to do.
In 2020, he filed a fourth attempt to make the bible the official book of Tennessee. In 2021, he filed a bill that would allow fathers to block abortions by their partners.
Then can’t all business owners then refuse service to anyone with different beliefs than themselves?
The bill wouldn’t just apply to wedding officiants and religious leaders — it also amends Tennessee Code Section 36-3-301, which applies to public government officials, including county clerks who handle marriage licenses.
Cool, I hope these do refuse to handle homo marriage licenses, they can get sued to high hell and the gays will get a nice little payout.
Sounds good to me, keep it up religious bigots, its taxpayer money you’re handing right to the gays.
Yeah. Drag them to federal court. Fuck Tennessee.
Its the only way to win against them.
How do you intend to collect this nice little payout?
There’s only one way to get a Republican to honor the Constitution. A lawsuit ain’t it.
Oh, we’ve already got Kim Davis, this will just go the same way.
These states, repeatedly, pass unConstitutional laws and they lose in court. I guess its time for TN to give it a try.
They’ll lose at every court this is tried in, the fed law is clear on this. Its why this jackasses other legislation has failed.
Beer guy and the Handmaid say hold my beer.
Another good Christian, shitty human
In his circles, there’s little difference.
Liberal Redneck – MAGA and Russia, Sittin’ In a Tree….
Anti-Trans NYT Article Gets It’s Facts Horrendously Wrong
Erin Reed then joins, diving right into the busy 2024 in state-level anti-trans legislation in the US, first parsing through the media’s insistence on emphasizing bigoted and misinformed perspectives – as seen in the New York Times’s recent piece by Pamela Paul – and how the arguments seen in those texts are perfectly reflected in the statehouse hearings in red states.
Government is good. Elect people who want to do the job
Let’s talk about the Senate, $95 billion, Ukraine, and tests….
Anti-Trans Hysteria Takes Over Alberta
I like how he shows the lies and misinformation tweets that the right uses as an excuse to pass these laws. He shows how she mentions trans women don’t belong on women’s teams because a clearly bigger and stronger trans woman picks up an opposing player and body slams her. But here is the thing. There was no trans woman. The person in question was born female. Not male, born female. Assigned female at birth. Hey some people are bigger than others. That is because sexual mix in the body shows that it is rare to be completely male / completely female. Sex is a spectrum no matter what your reproductive organs are. He also points out that only 23 people under the age of 18 had breast surgery and it is not known if they were because of medical issues or pain. Many girls have breast augmentation or reduction before 18. Plus a lot of girls have cancer of the breast or other such issue requiring removal. And remember in Canada like in the US a minor requires a parent or guardian to approve of medical treatments. He also points out the newest study find 94% of trans people happier after transitioning. Also I love his calm collected delivery. Lance of the serfs points out knee surgery regrets are as 30%, yet no one is protesting outside those doctors offices. Hugs. Scottie
Kansas’ AG is telling schools they must out trans kids to parents
He was reminded that that is not a legal requirement, only an anti-trans anti-LGBTQIA desperate wish that teachers and schools would do. Why? If a child doesn’t feel comfortable being themselves with / around, there is maybe a good reason. They live their parents, not school officials. But the republicans want to use the child’s fear of their parent’s response to keep them hidden at school so they are not outed. Plus it gives the parent time to try to force the kid to be straight and cis while they have control. That is the goal, to force the LGBTQIA out of the public view. To remove acceptance and tolerance for non-straight non-cis people. To pretend the entire country is straight and cis, that anything else is abnormal and wrong. These republicans can not accept the modern age or that everyone else is not living by their idea of god’s will. What happened to the idea of live and let live? Later in the article a judge claims that parents have the right to control what their minor children are called. Yet when kids are taunted and harassed, the teachers don’t rush to interfere or send notes home to the parents. Seems a very one-sided policy. Hugs. Scottie
LGBTQ+ rights advocates saw the letters as seeking policies that put transgender and nonbinary youth in physical danger but also as an attempt to tell transgender people that they’re not welcome. Jordan Smith, leader of the Kansas chapter of the LGBTQ+ rights group Parasol Patrol, said forced outing will create more anxiety for students and even push some back into the closet.
“It’s like they don’t want us to exist in public places,” said Smith, who is nonbinary.
Kansas’ attorney general is telling public schools that they’re required to tell parents their children are transgender or nonbinary even if they’re not out at home
ByJOHN HANNA Associated Press and GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated PressFebruary 9, 2024, 12:18 AMTOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas’ attorney general is telling public schools they’re required to tell parents their children are transgender or nonbinary even if they’re not out at home, though Kansas is not among the states with a law that explicitly says to do that.
Republican Kris Kobach’s action was his latest move to restrict transgender rights, following his successful efforts last year to temporarily block Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration from changing the listings for sex on transgender people’s birth certificates and driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities. It’s also part of a trend of GOP attorneys general asserting their authority in culture war issues without a specific state law.
Kobach maintains that failing to disclose when a child is socially transitioning or identifying as nonbinary at school violates parents’ rights. He sent letters in December to six school districts and the state association for local school board members, then followed up with a public statement Thursday after four districts, all in northeast Kansas, didn’t rewrite their policies.
The Kansas attorney general’s letters to superintendents of three Kansas City-area districts, Topeka’s superintendent and the Kansas Association of School Boards accused them of having “surrendered to woke gender ideology.” His letters didn’t say what he would do if they didn’t specifically require teachers and administrators to out transgender and nonbinary students.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates saw the letters as seeking policies that put transgender and nonbinary youth in physical danger but also as an attempt to tell transgender people that they’re not welcome. Jordan Smith, leader of the Kansas chapter of the LGBTQ+ rights group Parasol Patrol, said forced outing will create more anxiety for students and even push some back into the closet.
“It’s like they don’t want us to exist in public places,” said Smith, who is nonbinary.
Five states have laws requiring schools to inform parents if their children use different pronouns, socially transition to a gender different than the one assigned at birth or present as nonbinary, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which supports transgender rights. Another six have laws that encourage it, the project says.
Kansas is on neither list. A bill introduced last year would bar schools from using the preferred pronouns for a student under 18 without a parent or guardian’s written permission, but it did not clear a Senate committee.
GOP lawmakers did enact a law over Kelly’s veto that ended the state’s legal recognition of transgender and nonbinary identities by defining male and female for legal purposes based on a person’s “reproductive anatomy” identified at birth. But Republican state Sen. Renee Erickson of Wichita, a vocal supporter and a former middle school principal, said it does not cover issues about whether schools must inform parents about a child’s gender identity at school.
Erickson said she now favors taking a look at the bill before a Senate committee, saying it addresses a “policy gap.”
“The parents have a right to know what is affecting their child,” she said.
In 2022 a federal judge hearing a northeast Kansas teacher’s lawsuit concluded that her school district’s policy of not informing parents of a child’s gender identity at school without their consent violated a parent’s constitutional right to raise children as they see fit. The district settled the case, paid the teacher $95,000 and revoked the policy.
The judge said parents’ constitutional rights include a say “in what a minor child is called and by what pronouns they are referred.”
But Kobach cited neither that case nor Kansas law in his letters to the state school boards association, the Topeka school district and the Kansas City, Shawnee Mission and Olathe districts in the Kansas City area. Instead he cited U.S. Supreme Court decisions going back as far as 1923 that he said affirmed parents’ rights. His office released copies Thursday.
He told each district that its policies on transgender students violated parents’ rights and said two other districts in the Wichita area quickly rewrote their policies after his letter arrived. In his letter to the school boards group, he noted it provides legal help to local districts.
In each letter he said withholding such information from parents would be “arrogant beyond belief.”
State attorneys general serve as the lead lawyers for state governments, and most also oversee at least some criminal prosecutions. But they also look outward, and Kobach’s letters weren’t the first to issue warnings not grounded in a specific state law.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita launched an online form Tuesday to gather complaints about “objectionable curricula, policies, or programs affecting children” in education. His office said it will follow up on submissions that may violate Indiana law but added that materials don’t have to meet that criteria to be posted for people to review.
Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent requests to at least two medical providers that don’t operate in his state for information about providing gender-affirming care as part of an investigation, though it’s not clear what Texas law would cover them. Washington state’s attorney general invoked a law there to block Seattle Children’s Hospital from complying, and QueerMed, a Georgia-based telehealth provider, said on its website that it will not comply.
As for Kobach, Tom Alonzo, a Kansas City LGBTQ+ rights advocate, argued that the attorney general is bent on “intentional marginalization” of transgender people. Micah Kubic, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said Kobach is ignoring students’ right to privacy and called the attorney general’s stance “cruel” and “dangerous.”
While the Kansas City district declined comment, the other three districts said they deal with transgender and nonbinary students case by case and seek to work with parents. The Topeka district expressed confidence that its practices are legal. The four districts are among the largest in Kansas and together have more than 88,000 students or 18% of the total for the state’s public schools.
The strongest response came from Michelle Hubbard, the Shawnee Mission superintendent, in her district’s response in December. She chided Kobach for not citing actual cases in the district of parents’ rights being violated and suggested that he was relying on “misinformation” from “partisan sources.”
“We are not caricatures from the polarized media, but rather real people who work very hard in the face of intense pressure on public schools,” Hubbard wrote.
___
Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press writer Isabella Volmert in Indianapolis contributed.
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